The subject matter described and/or illustrated herein relates generally to electrical connectors, and more particularly, to lead frames for electrical connectors.
In a traditional approach for interconnecting circuit boards, one circuit board serves as a back plane and the other as a daughter board. The back plane typically has a connector, commonly referred to as a header, that includes a plurality of signal pins or contacts which connect to conductive traces on the back plane. The daughter board connector, commonly referred to as a receptacle, also includes a plurality of contacts or pins. Typically, the receptacle is a right angle connector that interconnects the back plane with the daughter board so that signals can be routed therebetween. The right angle connector typically includes a mating face that receives the plurality of signal pins from the header on the back plane, and contacts that connect to the daughter board.
Some right angle connectors include a plurality of contact modules that are received in a housing. Each contact module includes a lead frame having a plurality of electrical terminals encased within a body. To meet digital multi-media demands, higher data throughput is often desired for current digital communications equipment. Contact modules must therefore handle ever increasing signal speeds at ever increasing signal densities. However, increasing signal speed and/or density may introduce more signal noise, commonly referred to as crosstalk, between terminals within a single lead frame and/or between the terminals of the lead frames of adjacent contact modules within the connector. Further, increasing signal frequencies can lead to the generation of undesired signal propagation modes.
A need remains for a contact module having both a reduced amount of cross talk between lead frame terminals and a geometry that facilitates minimization of undesired signal propagation modes within a lead frame.